Lightning Owner Wants to Build to Last, in Tampa and on Ice

TAMPA, Fla. — As a money manager, Jeff Vinik made hundreds of millions of dollars by taking big bets on undervalued assets. But when he turned 50, he wanted to do something else. He did not play golf and could visit only so many museums.

So he told his wife, Penny, that he was going to buy a hockey team. Then he did what made him a wealthy man: He studied.

He bought textbooks on sports management, spoke to team owners around the country, met with N.H.L. Commissioner Gary Bettman for three hours and even used Google to search “How to buy a hockey team.”

Fifteen months later, in March 2010, he bought the Lightning, a team that had won a Stanley Cup but also had a parade of owners who lost tens of millions of dollars.

“When I do something, I try to immerse myself in it,” said Vinik, who has an engineering degree and used to run the nation’s largest mutual fund. “I’ve been in the stock market my whole life, and it’s the same process.”

The estimated $110 million he paid for the Lightning was a bargain. Thanks to an improving economy, the N.H.L.’s new television deals and the team’s progress on the ice, the Lightning are now worth about twice as much as Vinik paid for them, according to Forbes. Led by young stars like Steven Stamkos and Ben Bishop, the Lightning are now fighting in the Stanley Cup finals against the Chicago Blackhawks in a series that is tied at a game apiece.

Given the club’s disarray before he arrived, Vinik, 56, might be excused for taking a victory lap. But he is just getting started. In December, he unveiled plans to develop 40 acres of mostly barren land that he owns or leases around Amalie Arena, the Lightning’s downtown home. In partnership with Cascade Investment, which manages Bill Gates’s money, Vinik envisions at least $1 billion in spending on new office towers, low-rise apartments, shops and a medical school. Though the real estate project and the club are separate, they are complementary, he said.

“Forty acres downtown with water on three sides, I don’t know if you can find that anywhere in America,” Vinik said. “This is a great place, but it hasn’t been fully developed.”

With the Buccaneers struggling in the N.F.L. and baseball’s Rays battling with public officials to get a new stadium, the Lightning have become the sports darlings of the region. This has turned Vinik, a soft-spoken, bookish man who had limited interaction with the news media when he worked in finance, into a kind of local rock star.

He routinely appears on television, meets fans on game nights and receives standing ovations at employee meetings. He also speaks to local civic groups, meets with politicians and flies around the country trying to persuade chief executives to move their operations to his adopted city.

“He’s my co-cheerleader-in-chief,” said Bob Buckhorn, the mayor of Tampa, which is expected to spend about $20 million to upgrade the roads, sewers and other infrastructure for the development. “When the mayor says it, it’s expected. But when you have Jeff Vinik selling Tampa, it’s different.”

As a relative newcomer, Vinik has tried to overcome doubt about whether he was in Tampa just to make a quick buck, as sports owners have done in other markets. He has spent $62 million to upgrade Amalie Arena, a county-owned building, and pledged $10 million to the Lightning’s Community Hero Program, which gives $50,000 to a local charity at each home game. In 2012, he stopped commuting from Boston and moved his family to the area.

Vinik’s vision for the arena district is not new. The Toronto Maple Leafs, the Los Angeles Lakers and Kings, the New England Patriots and others play in homes that are centerpieces of larger developments. But in some ways, Vinik’s plan is more audacious because Florida’s cities are known more for their sprawl than density, and because he has requested relatively little from public officials.

“He is not asking for a lot,” said Philip Porter, a frequent critic of public financing for sports teams who teaches the economics of sports at the University of South Florida. “He receives a few subsidies, like a parking garage, but it isn’t like he was asking for a new arena.”

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Under Vinik, team executives rebranded the Lightning in 2011 to give them a traditional look and a feeling of permanence.CreditDirk Shadd/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated Press

The stability and vision under Vinik’s ownership are all the more startling — and reassuring, if you’re a fan — given the revolving door of owners who have held the club since the franchise was awarded, in 1990, along with the Ottawa Senators.

After the original financiers for the team backed out, Phil and Tony Esposito, brothers who are in hockey’s Hall of Fame, persuaded Kokusai Green, a Japanese golf course operator, to bankroll the club. But the group’s titular owner, Takashi Okubo, was never seen in Tampa and never attended a game. After the economic bubble collapsed in Japan, his company took more money out of the team than it put in, leaving the team chronically short of cash.

Conditions were so bad that the Internal Revenue Service investigated the team, and George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ principal owner and a minority investor in the Lightning, pleaded to get out.

Even so, the team, which played its inaugural year of 1992 in a small arena at the Florida State Fairgrounds, drew big crowds in a converted baseball stadium called the Thunderdome in St. Petersburg, where the Rays now play. In 1996, the Lightning — who got their name because Tampa is considered the lightning capital of the country — moved into their current home in downtown Tampa.

In 1998, Art Williams, an insurance executive, bought the team, fired the Esposito brothers and poured money into the club. But the team languished and losses mounted, so he sold the team to Bill Davidson, the owner of the Detroit Pistons.

Under Davidson, the team flourished. John Tortorella was hired as coach, and Martin St. Louis, Brad Richards and Vincent Lecavalier formed a solid core on the ice. In the 2003-4 season, the Lightning racked up 106 points and then beat the Islanders, the Canadiens, the Flyers and the Flames to win their only Stanley Cup.

The next season was scrubbed because the owners locked out the players, and by 2008, the team had returned to mediocrity. Davidson sold the club to OK Hockey, a group headed by Oren Koules, who produced horror movies, and Len Barrie, a former N.H.L. player and real estate developer. After two years of mounting losses on and off the ice, they sold the club to Vinik.

He quickly cleaned house, hiring Steve Yzerman, the former Detroit star who later worked for the Red Wings, and Tod Leiweke, who had been chief executive of Vulcan Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trail Blazers. In 2011, they rebranded the Lightning to give the club a more traditional look and a feeling of permanence.

“They wanted it to feel like it was Original Six team, simple colors, very clean, and evolutionary from where they were,” said Edward M. O’Hara, the chief creative officer at SME, the design firm that helped rebrand the team. “They keep saying the uniforms are part of their success, so I told them to keep that in mind when they are handing out Stanley Cup rings.”

Starting in 2011, Vinik started upgrading Amalie Arena, adding a state-of-the-art video board and a massive digital pipe organ. The investments, along with the team’s improving record on the ice, helped increase attendance more than 21 percent. Revenue has steadily risen as well, helped by several playoff appearances.

Profits have been another story. The team had an operating loss of nearly $12 million last year even as revenue grew, according to Forbes. Kurt Badenhausen, who calculates team valuations at Forbes, said that the Lightning’s local television deal lags behind those of teams like the Blackhawks and the Rangers.

That means the Lightning are more reliant on ticket sales. According to the Fan Cost Index, the Lightning raised ticket prices 5.4 percent last year but still have the third lowest prices in the N.H.L.

“For a small- to mid-market team like Tampa, it’s hard to make money unless you make the playoffs,” Badenhausen said.

The team’s playoff run this year, though, has given the Lightning a lift. Vinik said the team was on the cusp of breaking even. But he added that he did not buy the team to make a quick profit, but to build something more permanent.

“The growth around there the next five to 10 years will be astonishing,” Vinik said. “Of course, I’d like to win the Stanley Cup now, but we’re developing something for the long term.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Lightning Owner Wants to Build to Last, in Tampa and on Ice. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe